Apple Just Disabled Clearview AI's iPhone App for Breaking Rules on Distribution | Hacker News Reader

Apple Just Disabled Clearview AI's iPhone App for Breaking Rules on Distribution

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193 pointsjbegley152 comments

> Apple Developer Enterprise Program should only be used to distribute apps within a company.

As much as I dislike the privacy invasive things that Clearview is doing, I don’t like Apple’s power to ban people from running whatever software they want if they’re not using the App Store or asking for endorsement or review by Apple. If you’re distributing your software privately and independently of Apple (i.e., not through the App Store), then you should be able to do whatever you want. We don’t want a world where car companies get to disable your car if you carried something in your car that they didn’t like.

Apple is merely treating the phone like a console. I can't play third party games on my PS4 or Switch. Nor can I run add third party apps to my car, TV or microwave.

And given how many companies want to use the iPhone for nefarious means I like the fact that Apple is looking after me. Many other users feel the same.

Which is similarly unacceptable, you own it, you decide what runs on it. Madness that it could ever come to this.

I own it, and I delegated it to Apple to decide what can run on it.

You could still delegating the decision to Apple without restricting other people use of their general purpose computer[1] if Apple simply ran a curation service. Your choice to only use apps that have Apple's stamp of approval doesn't require forbidding other people from making a different choice.

A curation service that forbids people from using competing services (or making their own decisions without any curator) is a monopolist trying to control a new market.

edit:

[1] https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

Sure thing, I would not object to your freedom to root your phone or something. I object to being portrayed as a victim [1] - I like the arrangement as it is, and I entered it willingly, having a choice.

[1] "Which is similarly unacceptable, you own it, you decide what runs on it. Madness that it could ever come to this."

That quote does not portray you as the victim. In fact, it reinforces that you should have the right to choose as you like. If everyone had the choice, there would be nothing wrong with anyone choosing, just as you have, to give up your control.

Everybody who's chosen to use an iPhone has done so freely and without being coerced. Alternatives exist, including one that's wildly more popular than the iPhone itself.

Yes, we did. So what? Someone that buys an iPhone can use their property as they desire. Apple is selling a general purpose computer (even if they wish they were selling an appliance with a specific limited set of features). They can (and should) make recommendations about how to use their product safely, but they don't have any right to forbid people from using what is now the customer's property for an "unapproved" purpode.

A manufacturer looses control of their product after the first sale[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

How is everything with a processor not a general purpose computer? By definition Apple isn’t selling a device that you can do with as you please like a general purpose computer.

If you don’t like Apple’s policies you are free to buy an Android device.

The free market is great isn’t it? It’s surprising what intelligent people can do without giving the government more power.

> How is everything with a processor not a general purpose computer?

They are general purpose computers; this does apply to most products with a processor. However, there are practical differences in what you can implement on an iPhone compared to a tiny embedded CPU with a few kB or MB of RAM.

> Apple isn’t selling a device that you can do with as you please

Transferring ownership of property is the very definition of "selling" something. If Apple want to restrict what people do with their device, they shouldn't be selling it. They can rent/license it, and a very different set of laws would apply.

> If you don’t like Apple’s policies you are free to buy an Android device.

I am also free to use the goods I bought in violation of those policies. That's what it means to own something.

> giving the government more power.

Who is giving the government which new powers? I'm talking about basic property rights.

So by that standard, an Apple //e with 128KB of RAM and 1Mhz processor wasn’t a general purpose computer?

Transferring ownership of property is the very definition of "selling" something. If Apple want to restrict what people do with their device, they shouldn't be selling it. They can rent/license it, and a very different set of laws would apply

So does the same rule apply to game consoles? My TV with an embedded Roku?

> Transferring ownership of property

Whilst you might buy the phone, I believe you effectively "rent/license" iOS, no? Which means Apple are restricting not what you do with "your device" but "their OS". No ownership of iOS has been transferred.

(I know the two are intimately tangled and this is nitpicking but we're well into the legal nitpicking weeds here.)

I would go further and reject the phrase “general purpose computer” as overly vague to the point of being meaningless. Is a bicycle a general purpose vehicle? Who decides what qualifies as a general purpose?

> Who decides what qualifies as a general purpose

Alan Turing and Alanzo Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

However, my use of the term is an explicit (my previous [2]) reference to these important talks by Cory Doctorow about the War on General Purpose Computing, which I strongly recommend watching/reading:

https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

And by that standard, the avionics controller for a missile is general purpose.

I am aware of the origins of the term. The term certainly had relevance 30–90 years ago. What I reject is that the term has any meaning when attempting to form a distinction between an iPad and a MacBook.

That means a (properly) relational DBMS can be completely locked down because the relational model is not Turing complete.

The goal here is to find a criteria under which you can require that manufacturers open up general purpose systems. And the proposal is that a system that is Turing complete is also general purpose.

The relational model is hugely expressive, and yet it is not Turing complete. So you have something that is plainly general purpose, but would be exempt from such a law.

That you can modify the relational model to make it Turing complete is irrelevant, it's already hugely expressive.

And that you'd typically run it on a machine that is Turing complete doesn't save you. If a manufacturer wanted to bypass that restriction, they'd design a system that is entirely dedicated to it.

While the DBMS itself isn't Turing complete, you probably need a Turing equivalent machine to implement the DBMS. Turing machines can implement less complex types of automation, but the underlying machine is still Turing complete.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make a purely electromechanical decision table. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_table )

It wouldn't be turing complete if you simply load the application into ROM and restrict the CPU from executing pages in RAM.

You can implement the entire relational model with about 8 operators and graph transformations, mostly distribution. You can add math functions as virtual tables, e.g. join against the times table to do multiplciation.

I wrote a paper on how this works, and while it was about ten years ago, I'm pretty sure you could do the algebraic transformations needed with just a stack, so I think you could do it with a finite state automata.

But see my response to myself.

CTEs make SQL Turing-complete IIRC.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/with-comm...

Procedural SQL definitely does, but see my response to myself.

> You could still delegating the decision to Apple without restricting other people use of their general purpose computer[1] if Apple simply ran a curation service. Your choice to only use apps that have Apple's stamp of approval doesn't require forbidding other people from making a different choice.

You have a much greater ability to inspect any code / processes that run on a general purpose computer running Windows and the like. With an iOS device, you have it on trust that the app isn’t doing anything nefarious. In that context, Apple’s role as benevolent guardian as to what is and isn’t allowed makes more sense.

More like accepted their terms. You can't delegate what isn't yours to begin with.

If you believe this, then surely you believe that what is delegated to Apple can be relegated back to you, which is what the company in question was attempting.

No, you didn't. Else you could stop "delegating".

It is madness. What's the solution? We can always go back to older computing platforms that don't have this problem with a third party exercising arbitrary its iron grip over our possessions.

Then don't buy an iOS device. This is no different from game consoles.

Or a tractor that refuses to run with custom modifications/repairs.

For those who haven't been paying attention to the comedic effects of intellectual property taken to the extreme (or logical conclusion, I'd argue): just punch "tractor dmca" into your favorite search engine. We often take for granted that people in this sphere are aware of this sort of insanity, but unfortunately that really isn't even close to being true.

Until it's impossible because all tractor makers sell with the same terms. And they've enough money to buy or sue any liberal alternatives out of existence.

I don't like it when consoles do it either, but a console is fundamentally a single purpose device.

A cell phone is increasingly people's primary computer for everything. And many times their only computer!

“I don’t like it when car companies don’t allow subcompact crossovers to do heavy towing. Such cars are increasingly people’s primary vehicle for everything. And many times their only vehicle!”

Seriously, most people don’t need their phone to qualify as a computer under your definition. You’re actually being somewhat presumptuous when you infer that people must own at least one “proper” computer.

If China forces Apple to pull an app for protesters from a game console, it really doesn't matter.

If China forces Apple to pull an app for protesters from those protester's primary computer, it's a huge issue.

I simply don’t agree. It’s not Apple’s responsibility to make products that compensate for bad national governments.

And I reject the claim that the scale of the issue is different between a phone and a games console. Who are you to say that a games console can’t be used for secure communications by protesters? That is equivalent to saying that we should be more concerned about crackdowns against journalists than against political satirists.

"I don’t like it when car companies don’t allow subcompact crossovers to do heavy towing"

Unintentional irony? You are apparently not aware that this is a perennial topic among car enthusiasts, because people noticed that small vehicles usually have much smaller tow ratings (if any) in the US than Europe, even though they seem to be mechanically the same. In the US, people use massive trucks to tow, and from what I've read, in Europe, they don't seem to need them.

Not irony at all, the analogy still fits. I can defy vehicle towing restrictions, I can weld extra metal to the sub-frame, I can fit a larger radiator to the engine and stiffer springs to the rear axle. I can do many things to make my subcompact crossover physically capable of towing a large load.

And I can jailbreak an iPhone.

————————

You could also buy a proper truck suited to the task.

And you can buy a proper computer suited to the task.

Absurd comparison. A subcompact is just not designed to tow a large load. But no one tries to keep you from modifying it. Apple purposely restricts your freedom.

I reject the distinction as entirely semantics. It's equally true to say that a car maker "purposely restricts" towing capacity in its small, lightweight models by making them small and lightweight.

Apple designs its iOS products to have a fully managed software-hardware ecosystem. That has a direct consequence of limiting libre freedom, but that doesn't mean Apple opposes the idea of giving customers freedom. They'll happily sell you a different computer with more freedom.

The car maker designs its subcompact crossover to have low cost and good fuel economy. That has the direct consequence of limiting towing capacity, but that doesn't mean the car maker opposes the idea of giving customers towing capacity. They'll happily sell you a different vehicle with more towing capacity.

Let's review:

Managed ecosystem <————> Able to execute whatever

Small and lightweight <————> Able to tow heavy loads

The analogy holds. More fundamentally I care more about customers having the right to choose the best product for themselves, rather than having @anoncake decide what's best for all of us.

"Managed ecosystem" is just a euphemism for restricting freedom.

> They'll happily sell you a different computer with more freedom.

Not one that fulfills the same purpose. Macs hardly fill the same niche as iPhones. If Apple sold both restricted and free iPhones at the same price, no one would object. Then customers would have a choice rather than Apple deciding what's best.

"Small and lightweight" is just a euphemism for can't tow for shit.

I'm sorry, but I don't think you understand how capitalism works. Apple isn't forcing anyone to buy an iPhone, other brands are available. And Apple isn't forced to make products which comply with your personal desires.

Now that you brought up capitalism, what do you think about the level of competition in the cell phone (OS) market?

I’d be hard pressed to call Apple a monopoly given their market share, but obviously market dominance isn’t a black/white thing (since even a real monopoly may have 99% market share and 1% competition). By some metrics that are relevant to certain markets (like app store revenue) Apple may have a majority market share, which probably gives them quite a lot of leverage and ability to engage in anti-competitive behavior.

More broadly it’s a market dominated by two trillion dollar companies with big network effects, which is a reduced level of competition compared to most other things, and it may be harmful for consumer choice for competition to also be reduced in other markets (like non-OS software or marketplaces for such) due to tying products together.

I don’t personally have a strong opinion on this but I think there’s a reasonable case to be made for regulation on those grounds. The challenge would be finding rules that are simple and clear cut without micro managing what companies can build.

Ok, so isn't it reasonable to acknowledge that society may bear real costs if towing capacities are arbitrarily reduced in US jurisdiction? People are discouraged and lose the benefit of towing which has economic value. People learn one more reason to doubt what they are officially told. Some people waste resources on bigger vehicles than they need. On the flip side, maybe fewer people have accidents from incorrect loading, going too fast, etc. But we can at least speculate that restrictive policies have consequences, which might be worse than other, less restrictive policies.

You seem to be assuming that the differences don't have a rational basis. Cars are generally homologated for a large geographic area, which might include Arizona even if the car is sold in Canada. Towing limit standards may also be defined differently in law.

Hypothetically the regulations might specify that the vehicle must be capable of safely towing the stated load without overheating at X incline at Y speed for Z time at A altitude, be able to stop in B meters, plus C overall safety margin. It's entirely reasonable and rational that the values of X, Y, Z, A, B and C might be different in Europe and North America.

Wait till you get a kindle. Amazon even locks your screensaver. You can't change it.

I use the Boox Nova which runs Android and is completely customizable.

Vote with your dollars.

Where did you get it and for how much?

And look at the screaming fit when Amazon reached into devices and deleted content. But somehow this is different, because it’s Apple?

The thing is, ios apps have been doing nefarious things since forever.

Apple takes away the ability to:

- see what the apps on your phone are doing

- let you prevent them from doing it.

The big one is networking. Apps can use the network without restriction. apps can link in SDKs that can contact any and all online advertisers. Apple does not allow firewall apps.

Sure, but in the end a phone by now is not like a console.

A console is a pure luxus good with many alternatives, one which is pretty open (the computer).

A phone is a by now pretty much necessary(1) equipment for the daily live majorly affecting it. With just two "viable" alternatives Android and iOs and a ecosystem+patent mess which make it close to impossible to create a 3 competitor (besides niche markets).

So it's ok if a game console is looked up, it's not if a phone is looked up. (EDIT: REMOVED misleading sentence)

---------------------------------

(1): Yes you can live with old style phones and I know even one person which does so. But it's a major impact onto your live making it hard in many often subtitle ways so not really viable for the general population. E.g. for Banks in the EU to buy anything over Credit Card which is not little risk (mid or higher amount, untrusted shop in Asia, etc.) it will enforce second factor authentication of the transaction. The gotcha is that for some (?many?most?) banks this can only be done through a phone app only available on iOs and _Unrooted_ Android, but not Windows or rooted Android or over a web interface or OS X or Desktop Linux. So basically you can't any longer properly use a credit card without a locked up smartphone with some (?many?most?) European banks...

I've been living without a mobile phone for about 5 years. The only time it has ever registered as slightly inconvenient for me is while travelling - specifically the airport pickup coordination. I simply don't use services that rely on thoroughly busted mobile phone 2FA - and I'm honestly dumbfounded that anyone with any understanding of 2FA and the insecurity of telecom networks would, given the fact that a lot of services use it for password reset.

So you use taxis and landlines instead?

Nope, just advanced planning and VoIP. You'd be amazed how much you save in both service fees and distraction. Friends and family quickly adapt as well, knowing to call in the evening - which leads to better conversations in my experience (no more "...so whatcha doin?", they've collected their thoughts and I'm not distracted). Obviously it doesn't work for everyone... but unless you are a doctor or a volunteer firefighter, I encourage people to give it a try for a month or two - you won't want to go back to lugging that privacy invading media consumption device around after that.

I feel comfort knowing I have to try very hard to install non approved apps. If anyone can distribute their own software through their own channels, surely people are going to be tricked into downloading it without understanding the consequences.

If you want flexibility, don’t buy an iPhone. Simple.

Some people like their orderly walled gardens, some don’t like them. You may not like the iPhone but I don’t see why you want to deny that to others? Surely they can decide for themselves.

How does having the ability to personally opt out of the walled garden prevent others from staying in the garden? You may not want to opt out of the garden but I don't see why you would want to deny that the others? Surely they can decide for themselves.

well, I can see an argument against this. Non tech user sees an app they want, they download it, app says you have to do this and this, OK the user says, and they've just opened their phone to everything.

This has already been abused with simple things like location and microphone, with people giving apps access to everything.

I think the current solution is sub optimal, but I like having the security on my iPhone to download anything and be fairly confident it won't send all my details to some credit acrd number collecting hacker.

But that's okay! People are allowed to make stupid decisions. Can we stop treating non-technical users like children please?

This is a (unpleasant) app that can only be installed on devices which this company already has full device control of. We aren’t talking about your security from unwittingly downloading something nefarious.

This is no different from you writing a pornhub app on your own iOS device using your own developer account and Apple reaching in and saying “nuh uh, not on our, I mean your device”...

Fair enough.

Your snark is unwarranted though.

You are probably right. I apologize.

thanks

I agree.

But the enterprise program IS using the App Store. An enterprise distribution just sets up a virtual App Store within the larger App Store. It's still a service that Apple provides that comes with a business agreement and terms of service (that these terms may be ethically uncool is an orthogonal point that we both probably agree on).

No one is stopping Clearview from hosting their code on GitHub with a Readme.md that makes it clear how to download XCode, and how to build an install the app on their own phone. Not even Apple.

No, it isn't using the app store. A company rents an enterprise certificate from Apple for $299/year. The company can then sign as many apps as they want using that certificate, and distribute the apps through MDM, itms-services links or manually using IPA files installed with iTunes. Apple can remotely revoke these certificates. However, Apple does not know which apps are being signed, unless they are informed through (in this case) the media.

On the other hand, something like this means that the app itself can be rendered moot. There is a power there that may be worth having - it's all a balancing act.

What does disabling the app actually mean in this context? I don’t think it’s unreasonable if Apple is preventing them from using Apple owned toolchains / software / any signing that Apple provides.

Can they, in theory, opt out of the Apple ecosystem entirely, root the phone and develop their own software outside of Apple entirely?

Whereas I from the Curated Garden fanclub want the ability to wander through the garden to enjoy the scenery and eat the fruit without having to understand the first thing about gardening, or how to identify fruit that are not safe to eat (the gardener does that) or which plants aren’t safe to touch (gardener takes care of not letting dangerous plants into the garden).

Does this mean that certain attractive but dangerous plants will be excluded from the garden? Yes, but that is by design.

If you want to bear the risk of toxic fruit and poisonous plants and feel that you can do as good a job as my gardener, go ahead and build your own garden. I won’t visit because I do my care for spending time to distinguish grass that is safe to lay on from grass that will poison me.

Developers who don't want to go through the App Store can release source code to their customers and then those customers can compile and install it themselves. This is obviously unreasonable for consumer apps but will work fine for enterprise customers.

Or developers can not write iOS apps and only support Android and they have all of the “freedom” they want.

For seven days, unless that’s changed.

Then don't use an iPhone? If you're in the DEP, you know there are rules. Don't like them? Don't join.

It's nice, but very dangerous.

I think Clearview AI should have been "taken down" by the government based on reasonable laws (which I guess don't exist).

I don't think Apple/Google/Amazone or any other company should need to find ways to "punish" a bad actor. Nor should they be allowed to do so as this is a abuse of power and a intervention into politics and moral aspects companies should not do. Nor feel the need to do so. (I mean who decides what constitutes as a "bad actor").

But then we live in times where the Goverment fail to protect their people (at least in cyberspace). Sometimes even repeatedly try to endanger their people (e.g. some of the anti crypto laws). And most importantly increasingly fail to represent the values of large parts of the population.

So I guess it's now the new normal that companies openly (ab-)use their power to push (or hinder) certain thinks which should fall into the area of country governance.

Honestly not really anything new, but sad nevertheless.

> I don't think Apple/Google/Amazone or any other company should need to find ways to "punish" a bad actor. Nor should they be allowed to do so as this is a abuse of power and a intervention into politics and moral aspects companies should not do. Nor feel the need to do so. (I mean who decides what constitutes as a "bad actor").

Apple didn’t take any kind of moral decision here. It just enforced its policy for distribution of apps, just like it did for Facebook and Google last year. The decision is not about whether Clearview’s app or service is a threat to society or privacy.

I mean, I wish that were true. But Apple does a lot of selective enforcement and the app store is full of editorial decisions. I agree with the editorial decision here, and disagree with the HKmap.live editorial decision.

Exactly. A fair number of companies try to use enterprise certificates as a way around Apple's App Store restrictions.

The big question is why this company didn't just distribute the software through the App Store. Is it a violation of Apple's App Store policies?

> Apple didn’t take any kind of moral decision here.

They most certainly did. This is both public virtue signaling and internal employee appeasement. They have good lawyers, so they had the lawyers come up with another reason, but it's purely a moral stance.

You can disagree with Apple's policies, or the principles and reasoning of others. And I'm sure some of those people are these mythical, awful virtue-signalling hypocrites that people seem to hate so much. But what makes this virtue signalling/hypocritical rather than a values-based decision?

Maybe you think Clearview is fine to offer the service, but there are people who disagree based on moral, ethical and practical arguments - and this action seems in line with Apple's stated privacy concerns and prior enforcement of their enterprise distribution agreement.

I’d expect someone making claims like that to have receipts for them...

Until the wider non tech population can comprehend the danger of things like clearview AI, people who do understand the danger now will have to use tools such as secondary boycots to force change.

I guess the choice everyone in SC can make into the future is too avoid and essentially blacklist the people who work for, fund or facilitate the success of companies like clearview AI.

People are always talking about culture fit here. Moral fit?

But the government is the main customer of Clearview AI, so why would the government remove it’s own access to a tool?

Laws against facial recognition are futile (a bit like trying to ban tracking on web or encryption).

At most you can ban outcomes - persecution, discrimination, etc. But when every Guatemalan farmer can setup their own facial recognition startup - the genie is out of bottle.

> At most you can ban outcomes

You can also change incentives. If aggregating faces into a database makes you liable for the damage that happens when that database is used, the "Guatemalan farmer" (and any business that wants reasonably prices liability insurance) will go out of their way to avoid making that database.

No one is gonna go after couple of misdemeanours in a third world country.

Nobody is going to buy their Clearview or Palantir grade military/police tech from a third-world farmer, either.

> a third-world farmer

I think this is a fairly uncharitable view of software engineering in these countries. Many countries by surveillance technology from others.

The grand-parent post specifically mentioned a "guatemalan farmer", so my point was that people typically buy surveillance technology from bigger players instead of from small-time hobbyists and sole proprietors. There's nothing wrong with the software engineering in other countries.

> At most you can ban outcomes - persecution, discrimination, etc

If I remember correctly, a similar app was used in Russia by stalkers to find lookalikes to their fancy (public persons, ex-lovers). This app empowers all sorts of creepy behaviour.

I think public access to the images of a person should be vetted by the person in question on a case by case basis, but that would destroy their business model.

Yep, found reference: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-...

From the linked article:

> Kabakov says the app could revolutionise dating: “If you see someone you like, you can photograph them, find their identity, and then send them a friend request.” The interaction doesn’t always have to involve the rather creepy opening gambit of clandestine street photography, he added: “It also looks for similar people. So you could just upload a photo of a movie star you like, or your ex, and then find 10 girls who look similar to her and send them messages.”

Ok lets ban digitally approaching people because of their looks...

If you make it accessible to everyone then you make sure you've got solid audit trail tech. Definitely notify face owner they've been looked up and by whom. A bit like LinkedId profile visitors work already.

> But when every Guatemalan farmer can setup their own facial recognition startup - the genie is out of bottle.

Not that familiar with Guatemala but I'm guessing they have internet there, a technically inclined Guatemalan farmer with money to burn and the marketing degree to sell snake oil could setup their own facial recognition startup 10 years ago.

The tech side of these things is neither impressive nor all too novel, the application side on the other hand has pretty significant impact on the society we want to build and live in. Just like GDPR for pushing back against invasive tracking I really don't see why a legislative approach is seen as ineffective in these discussions. Is that because of arguments like "somebody else will do it anyway" / "bad actors still exist"? That seems like relatively bad points to just do nothing. Everybody could rob a bank if they felt like it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't legislate against it.

The government's definition of a bad actor is different to yours and mine.

You can lie, cheat, steal, spy, torture and kill, so long as you do it on behalf of, and for the benefit of, a government.

I don't think there are any governments that have that policy. For instance, there are complaints when someone gets polonium poisoning, in spite of people thinking it's because of a government. There are complaints about the occupation of Iraq, from governments. And so on.

There are complaints, but polonium poisoning is a tool of a particular government. The perpetrators who carried out the murder did not face justice, they were given shelter by said government, and very likely rewarded for a job well done.

Other governments use drones to bomb people in various countries with impunity.

If a private citizen does any of this sort of murder of their own accord, they go to jail. The difference between government and private citizens is that the former can exempt itself from the consequences of these heinous acts. That is what is meant by the term “monopoly on violence.” [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Legal self defense is a thing, at least in my jurisdiction. So I don't think the government has a monopoly on violence.

Also, your opinion on what is murder is arbitrary. All your criticism really is is, "I don't like the definition currently used". That doesn't contain any reason why it should be modified or how or describe any principle.

The fact that governments can circumscribe the killings they do as “not murder” and have regular people believe them is the quintessential expression of the state monopoly on violence.

A monopoly on something doesn’t mean exclusive, 100% godlike control of it. It just means the legitimate provisioning of that thing falls under the authority of one entity. Copyright is a government granted monopoly on the right to copy a creative work but that doesn’t make it impossible for others to make copies, it just makes it illegal.

"The fact that governments can circumscribe the killings they do as “not murder” and have regular people believe them is the quintessential expression of the state monopoly on violence."

A state, and words and concepts, only exist insofar as people believe in them. You're only saying "murder is [defined]", not anything about governments. If you pretend you are making a statement about government or politics, it suggests that somehow a different system could achieve a better and different state. Everyone defining legal killing for themselves is not better or worse, it's a contradiction in terms - an absurdity.

So you expect the same government that is eager to invade your privacy and rights to turn around and protect your privacy?

I trust government power a lot less than corporate power.

Some corporations also invade privacy, like some governments do. And some protect it.

Just playing devil's advocate here:

"Nor should they be allowed to do so as this is a abuse of power and a intervention into politics and moral aspects companies should not do."

Your justification for apple not removing them is that it brings them into the realm of making moral decisions which companies should not be making. Yet people call for Clearview AI to make the moral decision of not selling facial recognition tech. It's a two way street. Why should apple not be allowed to make this moral judgement, yet Clearview should have to? Shouldn't Clearview just stay out of moral decisions, and as a company just try to maximize profits?

Apple owns the marketplace here so a different set of considerations apply to them compared to individual app makers.

Like you I've also instinctively always been opposed to task private companies with civic duties but in particular seeing the direction both the US and China are heading in terms of privacy I'm begrudingly almost feeling better with companies taking on stakeholder roles.

I don't really have any illusions that most of the entrepreneurs aren't full of it when they talk about values but nonetheless it's incredibly sad to see how strongly the very largest governments fail in advocating for civil liberties.

The notion that Apple should not be “allowed” to keep some software out of their App Store is nonsense. It saddens me that a person who claims to care about freedom also wants the government to forbid people from making editorial decisions on their private platforms.

You might have a point if Apple did not control the only App store for iOS devices.

"only App store for iOS devices." which was created by Apple. Just like Playstation, Nintendo and Xbox.

Consoles are problematic for the same reason.

Yes and they have a near total monopoly with their [checks notes] 20% global handset marketshare.

You can't just go to Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Nokia, or anybody else and get one!!

Don't deny that lock-in effects are a thing. Not that it Apple's practices less grossly immoral.

Amazon sells reckognition which competes with clearview

you sound like a shill for the likes of clearview etc.

The state was never about protecting people but protecting its masters (politicians, bureucrats).

It's a dangerous precedent to force distribution companies (in this case, Apple) to be able to decide to deny service to a vendor.

We want Apple to be able just to get rid of a bad actor.

Can people inside Apple theoretically abuse this power? Yes. However, it's way worse if Apple is forced to allow bad actors in the platform.

I'd say we might talk about better notarization approaches for app (mobile and non-mobile alike). However, getting rid of any notarization is a step backward.

I wonder what Apple would do if someone created a corporation to distribute apps with the enterprise license and every time they want to distribute the app, the corporation would make the potential user a member of the corporation first.

I mean this is all just legal bullshit preventing us from using our own devices the way that we want right? Why not use the same bullshit back against them…

I don’t have a dog in the fight between Clearview and Apple or law-enforcement’s use of AI. I’m just irked by this particular restriction on Apple devices. You just can’t really have a mobile presence without addressing Apple and even if they don’t have a technical monopoly, it annoys me that they still have this level of control over the market.

Apple can yank your enterprise certs if they feel you’re abusing them, too. They did it to Facebook last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19035834

Apple can and does change the rules of the App Store at any time. If someone created a corporation with the specific goal of circumventing this rule, I would expect Apple to simply change the wording of the rule to prevent this sort of workaround.

People DO do this. This is how things like iPhone Cake/AppCake work (and all the other "alternate" app stores). They register up a bunch of enterprise certs under some weird innocent sounding names, like "Global English Education Co.Ltd" or something, and use the certs to sign apps.

They don't control the market they control their environment and that might affect the market.

I have to wonder - what did they expect? Apple will drop the ban-hammer just as soon as the target becomes visible. It’s open knowledge. If you’re a growing company it’s only a matter of time before you grow large enough to attract their attention.

Apple bans smaller apps and companies all the time. You just don't hear about it.

In this case it is as clear cut as you can get.

The violation is using the enterprise app distribution platform for customers. It’s similar to what Facebook was busted for.

> Will Strafach, the founder and CEO of Guardian Firewall, an iOS security app, said he doesn't see any way Clearview can remedy its situation with Apple given the startup's clear flouting of the rules.

A web app can do this easily.

Web apps on iOS is "a decision tree where at every step you loose".

I love web apps, but still haven't used a single real PWA on iOS.

We're talking about an image upload and search results. If apple won't allow it, this is the only possible step where you can win.

Specifically, I was asked about how Clearview can make their iOS app available again.

While people are debating whether Apple should have the power to revoke certificates and disable such apps, I for one am glad that in the instances where this has been made public, they’ve all been shady apps meant to mislead and abuse people with a broader aim to subvert human society itself.

Look at the previous well known cases about this same decision — Facebook tracking people’s every move with a “VPN” software, and Google doing the same (though on a smaller scale) with its own “VPN” app.

These apps and app makers knew about the restrictions on the App Store, and yet they proceeded to bypass it through the enterprise program because the app makers (or those specific teams) and the apps are shady end-to-end. AFAIK, both Facebook and Google pulled the offending apps and decided not to go ahead with them on iOS. But they did continue (again AFAIK) with those on Android.

While we can hope that such bad publicity helps expose such massive threats to people around the world, there’s not much that can actually be done without regulation.

> they’ve all been shady apps

As nice as it is to see these apps be pulled, I would be more comforted if Apple were applying their rules uniformly instead of going after companies after the supposedly shady behavior makes the press.

How else was it supposed to work in this case? The whole point of the story is that Clearview was bypassing Apple's review process by using a signing key meant for distributing an app _internally_ to distribute the app to third parties outside of the store. Apple couldn't know about the misbehavior prior to disclosure because the whole point was to keep Clearview outside of their review process.

There are a number of easy-to-find examples where Apple is currently not revoking certificates.

What are the examples?

Can't they just skin the app and license it to these companies?

They just need an enterprise account for each company (or police force or whatever) to distribute the app internally. If anything this just enables them to charge more assuming they've proven out the capabilities and the ROI.

Then each company can distribute it as their own app internally - all within the guidelines of the enterprise TOS.

If just skinning it isn't enough then they can create an SDK and have then consult each company to develop its own app that uses this SDK as part of it. It isn't like Apple restricts enterprise app from using other services and APIs within their own apps.

I don't think the TOS are particularly unfair or hard to work within in this case.

This is the solution I would recommend to ClearView to stay in business.

Either they don’t have the expertise to distribute enterprise apps or their clients are not capable of maintaining a MDM software and an Apple Enterprise Account. The latter really bugs me though. It implies that e.g. police officers can install any software on their work devices if they wanted too, which might endanger citizens because of possible data leaks by device loss or hacks. With a MDM you can wipe sensitive data remotely and separate private data from work relevant data.

We distribute our business apps as unsigned xcarchives and our clients resign them with their Enterprise Certificates and Provisioning Profile and this can distribute them as they like.

Unfortunately Clearview is like an invasive pest that is out of control in the wild. Apple removing from their store is not going to dent it.

The complaint was that this app was being distributed outside of the store, which is against the terms of the Enterprise developer agreement.

Well it could become a progressive web app.. can u grant camera access to one? U for sure can upload a photo right?

Google needs to follow in these foot steps and remove it from Android phones.

what a wonderful gentleman the founder of that company is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That

“He was unsuccessful in early ventures to create social media applications after the advent of Apple's iPhone. In 2009, he created HappyAppy and ViddyHo, a phishing application or computer worm that spammed a users' contacts. Ton-That was sought by the police when this worm spread in 2009.”

Wow. Every entity that contracts with this firm has been grossly negligent.

Yeah, been there Ton-That. I knew I had heard that name in the valley before. Of course he's connected the usual list of amoral SV actors (PT), questionable politicians (Rudi and Richard) so working with law enforcement after writing phishing tools and worms for the iPhone is the usual next step... for shady law enforcement.

This can’t be serious:

“ It emerged from stealth mode in late 2017 and was linked to far right/alt-right supporters such as Chuck Johnson, Mike Cernovich, Douglass Mackey, and Paul Nehlen.[8]

Clearview AI received investments from Peter Thiel”

Chuck Johnson is the Holocaust denier who shits his pants in public and Cernovich is the pizzagate MRA right? Wtf

Slightly fallacious (ad hominem) but might be allowable here haha.

Linking to someone’s Wikipedia is ad hominem now?

> Slightly fallacious (ad hominem)

What kind of a person talks like this? This isn’t elementary school debate club.

By definition, didn’t most news ‘Just’ happen?

Would Apple allow this to be placed into the App Store? (IMO, they should)

It seems like a lot of companies are apparently using the developer program as an end-run around App Store review.

In the case of a tool like this it seems like the obvious solution would be to use Android phones for police officers, etc. so they can use apps without needing to get Apple to review and approve them.

They could use TestFlight to distribute apps that are not on the public App Store. Not the Developer Enterprise program.

Only if they comply with App Store rules (the ban on unfinished apps notwithstanding of course), submit "major" new builds for review as well as the initial build, and do not use the program in place of the App Store (i.e. there must be an eventual goal for the app to leave beta and go live.

Otherwise, they would be violating the ToS and can be removed from that as well.

TestFlight is limited to 10,000 testers per app.

That's still a lot of law enforcement officers (or worse) looking people up if Clearview was limited by that. As far as I'm concerned this sort of power belongs with an agency that only takes orders from a judge in each of the ~198 countries we have on earth. You don't want Joe Cop abusing this for whatever they please. If this sort of thing should even be legal in the first place (I think in Europe the last word has yet to be had).

Problem is they don't _only_ sell to law enforcement.

As far as I know, they sell to anyone which pays well and don't go public about using it.

I.e. I wouldn't be surprised if some questionable agencies focused around dodgy detective work or "discrediting" PR work. Heck I also wouldn't be surprised if he literally (but probably unknowingly) sold it to organized crime for which it quite valuable for tracking down witnesses which need to be pressured into keeping silent or some other bullshit usage.

I mean that is one of the major problems with the whole think: It's not a government/state controlled database only used by law enforcement. (Which still would be a problem but a bit less).

And you just Joe Judge not to just rubber stamp what Joe Cop wants?

Could they get around this by just making a different "app" per customer, with the same code but a different name (or whatever is used as a unique I'd)?

Nope.

4.3 Spam

Don’t create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app. If your app has different versions for specific locations, sports teams, universities, etc., consider submitting a single app and provide the variations using in-app purchase.

From: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spa...

they would allow it, even behind a login. but you would need to provide them a way to probe this work.

Apple has to grope into the internals of your backend to allow an app that uses an API?

Edit: Thanks for the helpful responses, everyone.

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